CAPTAIN MARVEL

Carol Danvers, a human woman with only snippets of memory of her Earth past, becomes the most powerful being in the Universe. She is caught in the middle of a war between two starfaring races that threatens to engulf the Earth. This, the penultimate film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, is the second to be set in the past (in this case, the 1990s).

See the trailer, clips, interviews and video featurettes here
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Genre: Superhero
Now Playing: Wide ReleaseRating: PG=13 (for sequences of sci-fi violence and action, and brief suggestive language)

The Kid

(Lionsgate) Ethan Hawke, Dane DeHaan, Chris Pratt, Vincent D’Onofrio. A young boy is forced to go on the run across the American West in a desperate attempt to save his sister from a villainous uncle. Along the way he becomes entwined in the tragic confrontation between Sheriff Pat Garrett and outlaw Billy the Kid and will use what he learns from both men to decide his course of action.

See the trailer and video featurettes here
For more on the movie this is the website
Genre: Western
Now Playing: AMC Disney SpringsRating: R (for violence and language)

RED SPARROW

A ballerina is recruited for the Soviet-era “Sparrow School” in which beautiful young women are trained to be ruthless assassins, using their sexuality as a weapon. She is given the target of a CIA agent with whom she develops feelings for. She is playing a dangerous game and there is no way to know who to trust. Her own agency is after her and her beloved mother; the only way out may be to betray all that she was.

A Fantastic Woman

(Sony Classics) Daniela Vidal, Francisco Reyes, Luis Gnecco, Aline Kupperheim.Marina is a transsexual woman who works as a waitress and moonlights as a nightclub singer. It is hard enough to survive as a transsexual in Latin America but when her boyfriend abruptly dies she is left floundering and wondering if she can go on.

See the trailer here.
For more on the movie this is the website
Release Formats: Standard
Genre: Drama
Now Playing: Wide ReleaseRating: R (for language, sexual content, nudity and a disturbing assault)

Death Wish

(Annapurna/MGM) Bruce Willis, Elisabeth Shue, Vincent D’Onofrio, Camilla Morrone. A family man whose wife and daughter are brutally attacked becomes a vigilante when he finds that the police can’t help him find justice – so he goes after the perpetrators himself. This is Eli Roth’s version of the classic Charles Bronson revenge thriller.

See the trailer and clips here.
For more on the movie this is the website
Release Formats: Standard
Genre: Action
Now Playing: Wide ReleaseRating: R (for strong bloody violence and language throughout)

Nostalgia

(Bleecker Street) Jon Hamm, Catherine Keener, Bruce Dern, Ellen Burstyn. This is an anthology of tales about loss and love, and the artifacts, memories and emotions that shape our lives.

See the trailer here.
For more on the movie this is the website
Release Formats: Standard
Genre: Drama
Now Playing: AMC Disney Springs, Regal Winter Park Village, Rialto Spanish Springs SquareRating: R (for some language)

The Vanishing of Sidney White

(A24) Michelle Monaghan, Elle Fanning, Logan Lerman, Kyle Chandler. A young writer pens a bestseller about the death of a high school classmate. As the controversy surrounding his hit novel grows, his relationship with his girlfriend disintegrates and at last he disappears without a trace. A decade later a dogged detective searches for the legendary author when his cult classic book is linked to a string of arsons. Florida Film Festival alumnus Shawn Christensen co-wrote and directed this.

See the trailer and an interview here.
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Release Formats: Standard
Genre: Mystery
Now Playing: AMC Universal CineplexRating: R (for language and some sexual references)

Urban legends have a tendency to take a life of their own. They also make for some pretty nifty horror movies, whether they are actual urban legends or made-up ones. One of the best of the latter was the Japanese horror film Ringu by Hideo Nakata which helped make the Japanese horror film industry a global powerhouse back in 1998. Four years later, Gore Verbinski of the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise made an American version that didn’t disgrace itself and in 2005, Nakata himself directed the American sequel.

Now in 2017 the powers-that-be at the studio felt the time was right for a third installment of the series but forewent most of the attributes that made the two films so successful and tapped Spanish director Gutiérrez to take his shot. I don’t think that the film’s problems rest primarily on the director’s shoulders necessarily.

The new installment is a sequel. In it, the videotape that brought death to whomever watched it seven days to the tick after watching it is still making the rounds. Holt (Roe) has left his high school sweetheart Julia (Lutz) behind to attend college in the Pacific Northwest. At first, all is hearts and roses as the two lovebirds Skype their sexy across the miles. Then, Holt stops answering his phone. Julia becomes worried so like any good girlfriend she treks to the school to find out what her boyfriend is up to.

It turns out that he has become part of a study of that very videotape as presided over by whacked-out Professor Gabriel (Galecki from The Big Bang Theory) who keeps his students alive by having them do the only thing that gets the video watchers off the hook – show the video to another potential victim. It turns out her man has seen the video and is 24 hours away from an up close and personal visit from Samara (Morgan), the angry spirit who crawls up out of the video screen to murder those foolish enough to give in to temptation.

When Holt’s relief watcher doesn’t show up, Julia herself takes the bullet and watches the tape – which has now been, conveniently enough, transferred to a digital file for easy streaming. It’s the 2010s after all. S’anyway, Julia wants to get to the bottom of this whole rigmarole and ends up chasing clues about the real Samara to a small village on a remote island in the Puget Sound. There she finds a blind priest (D’Onofrio) who may know more about the legend of Samara than he’s letting on.

I think most fans of the series would have welcomed an updating of the original, made in the age of VCRs and modems, into a more digital format. There are certainly a lot of ways good writers could have taken this – Hell, even the concept of a collegiate study of the phenomenon might have worked if the writers had shown some originality.

But they didn’t – not even a little bit. The dialogue is preposterous and the characters are largely too bland and personality-challenged to care about. Lutz and Roe seem to be trying but I have to say that I found their performances simply didn’t create any chemistry or energy onscreen. The producers, going for a PG-13 rating, didn’t even leave Gutiérrez graphic gore or sex to fall back on.

D’Onofrio is a smart actor, who sometimes shows up in bad movies but he never does anything less than his best. Here, his role has little depth to it but what it does have D’Onofrio gives it by the dint of his performance. None of the other actors in the film really hold up next to him although Galecki comes close.

This is a bit of a yawner as horror films go and that’s not what you want to hear when trying to make a scare flick. It has enough going for it that I can give it a very mild – VERY MILD – recommendation but this is a mediocre attempt at resurrecting a franchise that deserves better treatment. I’m quite sure both Nakata and Verbinski would be rolling in their graves if they had one.

REASONS TO GO:D’Onofrio gives it the old college try.REASONS TO STAY: A poorly written script and not enough imaginative scares doom this franchise revival.FAMILY VALUES: As you might imagine, there’s plenty of horrific sequences, spooky images, profanity, a bit of sexuality and a brief scene of drug use.TRIVIAL PURSUIT: The first film in the franchise without lead actress Naomi Watts and special make-up effects master Rick Baker.CRITICAL MASS: As of 4/4/17: Rotten Tomatoes: 6% positive reviews. Metacritic: 25/100.COMPARISON SHOPPING:RinguFINAL RATING: 5/10NEXT:John Wick Chapter 2

RINGS

It is whispered that once there was a videotape, one in which if you watched it you would be marked and in seven days after first viewing it you would die. When a woman’s boyfriend gets caught up in the subculture surrounding the urban legend, she sacrifices herself to save him and finds out that the horror doesn’t end there – that there is a movie within the movie, one that nobody knew existed and one that will bring her face to face with Samara herself.

See the trailer and the first three minutes of the movie here.
For more on the movie this is the website.
Release Formats: Standard
Genre: Horror
Now Playing: Wide ReleaseRating: PG-13 (for violence/terror, thematic elements, some sexuality and brief drug material)

The Autopsy of Jane Doe

(IFC Midnight) Emile Hirsch, Brian Cox, Ophelia Lovibond, Olwen Kelly. A small town coroner and his son who assists him receive a body one dark and stormy night; the body of a woman who was found in the walls of a home where a terrible massacre took place. The two begin to perform an autopsy on the body but strange and disturbing things begin to happen…and soon it becomes apparent that this strange body might be at the center of it.

See the trailer here.
For more on the movie this is the website.
Release Formats: Standard
Genre: Horror
Now Playing: Enzian TheaterRating: R (for bloody horror violence, unsettling grisly images, graphic nudity and language)

The Comedian

(Sony Classics) Robert De Niro, Leslie Mann, Harvey Keitel, Danny DeVito. An aging comic icon, seeking to reinvent himself in a new era of stand-up instead gets into a physical altercation with an audience member and is sentenced to community service. There he meets the daughter of a predatory real estate developer who could be the key to his future.

Neruda

(The Orchard) Gael Garcia Bernal, Luis Gnecco, Pablo Derqui, Alfredo Castro. In 1948 the Chilean president banned the communist party in Chile as the Cold War went into full swing. Poet and member of the Chilean Senate, Pablo Neruda decried the actions of the President and was forced to go into hiding. A dogged police inspector pursued him only to find the poet and academic was one step ahead of him at nearly every turn. This, Pablo Larrain’s latest film, was nominated for a Golden Globe for Best Foreign Language Film.

See the trailer here.
For more on the movie this is the website.
Release Formats: Standard
Genre: Biographical Drama
Now Playing: Regal Winter Park VillageRating: R (for sexuality/nudity and some language)

The Space Between Us

(STX Entertainment) Asa Butterfield, Gary Oldman, Britt Robertson, Carla Gugino.Gardner Eliot is the first human to be born outside of planet Earth – his mother was one of the original colonists of Mars but she died giving birth to him and never revealed the identity of his father. As the boy grows up, he becomes more obsessed with finding out who his father is and in the process begins an online relationship with a girl named Tulsa in Colorado – not the girl named Denver in Oklahoma which is what he was originally after. Anyway, when Gardner gets a chance to go to Earth he takes it, hoping to experience the home planet he’s never known only to discover that his fragile physiology will kill him if he remains there too long.

See the trailer, clips, interviews, a featurette and B-roll video here. For more on the movie this is the website. Release Formats: Standard Genre: Teen Romance Now Playing: Wide ReleaseRating: PG-13 (for brief sensuality and language)

Un padre no tan padre

(Pantelion) Héctor Bonilla, Zamia Fandiño, Jacqueline Bracamontes, Benny Ibarra de Llano. When 85-year-old Don Servando Villegas is kicked out of the retirement home he lives in because of his antisocial behavior, his son is forced to take him in to the commune where he lives with his girlfriend and son. As the logline describes it, old age meets new age as the elderly gentleman discovers that the family we’re born into isn’t always the one we create for ourselves as we make our journey.

See the trailer here.
For more on the movie this is the website.
Release Formats: Standard
Genre: Comedy
Now Playing: Regal The LoopRating: PG-13 (for drug material, some language and partial nudity)

We often feel helpless about things. Those in power have too much money, too much power, too many guns. They have control over everything and we basically just have to take it and as time goes by, it becomes harder and harder to exist while those who are in charge seem to have it easier and easier, and do more injustice to us with impunity. In a situation like that, who are you gonna call?

In the town of Rose Creek, it’s easy to recognize who is oppressing them; it’s Bartholomew Bogue (Sarsgaard), a ruthless industrialist who runs the gold mine outside of town. He has bought and paid for the Sheriff (Rhodes) and treats his miners like slaves. Now he’s turned his sights to the town which he wants to destroy so he can further mine gold deposits he thinks might be there. He is trying to intimidate them into leaving – and it’s largely working, but some of the townspeople are willing to stay and fight. Those must be taught a lesson and that lesson ends with Matthew Cullen (Bomer), a good-hearted farmer, gunned down in front of the church which is also burned out.

His widow, Emma Cullen (Bennett) then goes in search of a gunman who can bring her if not justice at least vengeance. She finds Sam Chisolm (Washington), a duly licensed officer of the court from Wichita, Kansas – or a bounty hunter, which is what he really is. When Emma explains what’s happening in Rose Creek, at first he’s reluctant to get involved – until he finds out who is doing unto the good citizens of Rose Creek. Then he’s ready to take on an army.

He’ll need some tough characters to take on the murderous mercenaries that Bogue has hired. First up is gambler Josh Faraday (Pratt) who essentially owes Chisolm for getting his horse out of hock. After that came sharpshooter Goodnight Robicheaux (Hawke) and his associate Billy Rocks (Lee), an immigrant from Asia and an expert with knives. Then there’s the Mexican outlaw Vasquez (Garcia-Rulfo) and the Comanche brave Red Harvest (Sensmeier). Finally there’s Jack Horne (D’Onofrio), a legendary trapper.

It is seven hard men against an army. When they ride into town, they take Bogue’s men by surprise and take over the town but they know that Bogue, who is in Sacramento at the time, will be back with many, many more men. They train the townspeople to defend themselves and they also liberate the miners who also will make their stand there. But how can they, when the bad guys are so many, so much better armed and so much more experienced at fighting?

This is of course a remake of the classic John Sturges western of 1960 which in itself was a remake of the 1954 Akira Kurosawa classic Seven Samurai. Fuqua, who directed Washington to an Oscar in Training Day, is a big fan of Westerns in general and The Magnificent Seven was always one of his favorites. Feeling that the themes of tyranny and terrorism were even more apt today than they were in 1960, he took on the daunting task of remaking an iconic Western which in many ways made the career of Steve McQueen (in the Josh Faraday role).

The cast here is pretty top notch. Washington is at the top of his game, channeling Clint Eastwood and Gary Cooper. Few actors in Hollywood today can play a badass as effectively as Washington can; despite the 70s porn star mustache, he is intimidating and tough as nails. He also looks pretty freaking good for a man in his 60s.

Pratt like Washington is an enormous star and here he brings his trademark irreverence to the role, making Josh Faraday not just comic relief (which he is occasionally) but a badass in his own right. This role isn’t going to advance his career any further but it isn’t going to knock it backwards either. Pratt has a tendency to play the same role over and over again recently and this is more of the same.

Hawke has a good turn as the sharpshooter whose Civil War experiences haunts him and has made him reluctant to take up the rifle again. For my money though, one of the performances you’ll remember is D’Onofrio, whose high squeaky voice doesn’t sound remotely like what we’re used to from him, but plays Horne honestly and with relative dignity. He just about steals the movie.

Fuqua gets points for casting ethnic actors into the proper roles; a Hispanic actor plays the Mexican, a Korean actor the Asian and an Inuit actor the Native American. There isn’t really any mention of racial prejudices which in that era were prevalent and extreme; few white people would have sought or accepted help from an African American, even if they were desperate, nor would they have looked to Mexican or Native help as well – most white settlers considered all three ethnic groups subhuman. I like the diversity of the cast, but I do think that ethnicity should have been addressed at least somewhat.

The final confrontation between Bogue and his men and the townspeople takes up the bulk of the movie and is epic in scope. There’s some decent fight choreography here and while it doesn’t up the ante in action scenes, it at least distinguishes itself as well staged and exciting. The gunfight is everything you’d want from a climactic battle, so kudos for that.

I don’t think anyone can reasonably expect this movie to be replacing the original in the hearts and minds. I’m pretty sure that isn’t why Fuqua made it. Unfortunately, it will be held up against the original – whether Seven Samurai or the 1960 version – and it will come up short against both of those. However, taken on its own merits it’s not that bad but to be honest not that bad doesn’t measure up when it comes to two classic predecessors.

REASONS TO GO: Washington and Pratt are huge stars. D’Onofrio turns in one of his most interesting performances in years.REASONS TO STAY: Nothing is really added to the source material here. The racism of the era is glossed over.FAMILY VALUES: As with most westerns, there’s plenty of rootin’, tootin’ and shootin’. There’s also a bit of foul language and some sexually suggestive material.TRIVIAL PURSUIT: This would be the final score by Oscar winning composer James Horner as he passed away June 22, 2015.CRITICAL MASS: As of 10/15/16: Rotten Tomatoes: 63% positive reviews. Metacritic: 54/100.COMPARISON SHOPPING:The Wild BunchFINAL RATING: 6.5/10NEXT:Blue Jay

THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN

A desperate border town overrun by a savage businessman and his army of mercenaries reaches out to a bounty hunter for help. He recruits a group of seven outsiders who are willing to take the job. The odds are overwhelmingly against them but this small group finds that they are fighting for a lot more than a paycheck. This is a remake of a classic which in turn was a remake of a classic.

See the trailer and clips here.
For more on the movie this is the website.
Release Formats: Standard
Genre: Western
Now Playing: Wide ReleaseRating: PG-13 (for extended and intense sequences of Western violence, and for historical smoking, some language and suggestive material)

End of a Gun

(Grindstone/Lionsgate) Steven Seagal, Florin Piersic Jr., Jade Ewen, Jacob Grodnik. A former federal agent, now working as a mall security guard, rescues a woman from the wrath of a drug lord’s enforcer. Now he’s going to have to call upon all his skills to keep the two of them alive. However, seeing as it’s Steven Seagal, I think we can safely say the enforcer’s days are numbered.See the trailer and a clip here.
For more on the movie this is the website.
Release Formats: Standard
Genre: Action
Now Playing: AMC Loew’s Universal CineplexRating: R (for violence, language and brief sexuality)

The Hollars

(Sony Classics) Margo Martindale, Sharlto Copley, Richard Perkins, John Krasinski. A struggling New York artist returns home to the small town he’d fled years before when he receives word of his mother’s illness. Staying in the house he grew up in, he is forced to deal with his family’s dysfunctional drama, the machinations of a high school rival and the seductions of a former girlfriend even as he prepares for fatherhood himself, a job he feels woefully unsuited for.

See the trailer and clips here.
For more on the movie this is the website.
Release Formats: Standard
Genre: Dramedy
Now Playing: AMC Disney Springs, Regal Winter Park VillageRating: PG-13 (for brief language and some thematic material)

I.T.

(RLJ) Pierce Brosnan, James Frecheville, Anna Friel, Stefanie Scott. The CEO of an aerospace company would have every right to feel on top of the world. After all, his company is about to revolutionize what airplanes are all about, he has an adoring family and lives in a state-of-the-art smart house where everything is computer-controlled. When a glitch shows up in his system, he calls an I.T. guy out to take a look at it and gets a lot more than he bargained for – a psychotic stalker.

See the trailer and a clip here.
For more on the movie this is the website.
Release Formats: Standard
Genre: Drama
Now Playing: AMC Loew’s Universal CineplexRating: NR

Max Rose

(Paladin) Jerry Lewis, Kerry Bishé, Kevin Pollack, Claire Bloom. Days before his wife of 65 years passes away, jazz pianist Max Rose makes a discovery that shakes his world to its foundation; his marriage and consequently his entire life may not be what he thought it was. Dogged and determined, even as his own health requires his children to put him into a nursing facility, he determines to find out who may have been his wife’s lover.

See the trailer here.
For more on the movie this is the website.
Release Formats: Standard
Genre: Drama
Now Playing: Regal Winter Park VillageRating: NR

Storks

(Warner Brothers) Starring the voices of Andy Samberg, Kelsey Grammer, Jennifer Aniston, Ty Burrell. We all know how babies are delivered, right? Yup…via stork. But that business has long been unprofitable and the storks have wisely gone into the more lucrative package delivery biz. However, the baby making machine has unaccountably produced an unaccounted for baby. Needing to find the rightful parents before the powers that be discover the snafu, the best courier in the stork fleet and a couple of friends try to right what could be a monumental error.

See the trailer, clips, interviews and B-roll video here.
For more on the movie this is the website.
Release Formats: Standard
Genre: Animated Feature
Now Playing: Wide ReleaseRating: PG (for mild action and some thematic elements)

It is not unusual to be fascinated by dinosaurs. We all look at the great lizards who ruled the world before men walked upright in awe and wonder. Now there is nothing left but the fossilized remains of their bones. We know precious little about them, mostly extrapolating from the few tantalizing clues we’ve discovered over the years. How would it capture the imagination if we could examine a real, living dinosaur – and how insanely dangerous would that be?

John Hammond had a dream. He’d discovered away to clone dinosaurs using blood found in mosquitoes trapped in amber over several million years. He wanted to display them in a biological preserve on Isla Nublar off the cost of Costa Rica. Unfortunately, his plans to open Jurassic Park (as he hoped to call the theme park) met with disaster and death.

However, that was 22 years ago. His dream became reality eventually – in Jurassic World, a high-tech theme park complete with Starbucks and a resort hotel. Hammond is no longer with us, but his successor – Simon Masrani (Khan) – has given the world a major tourist attraction that draws millions every year.

However, like every human endeavor, the shine wears off pretty quickly and people grow jaded, their attention captured by other things. In order to stay competitive, Masrani knows he has to present new attractions to keep the crowds coming. But dinosaurs don’t exactly grow on trees; there are only so many of them to go around. He knows what the public wants – bigger, louder, more teeth. So he sets his chief mad scientist Dr. Henry Wu (Wong) to genetically engineer one, one with the traits of a variety of different dinosaurs – only bigger, louder and with more teeth.

Park director Claire (Howard) has no problem with that. She’s already got Verizon interesting in sponsoring the new exhibit. However, one of her top trainers isn’t so excited. Owen (Pratt), who has a history with Claire (they dated for about five minutes years ago) and a military background, has managed to make some inroads with the Velociraptors who at least have a kind of mutual respect thing going with him and will occasional listen to his commands. A genetically engineered dinosaur? Messing with nature can only end up in disaster.

And so it does. The new dinosaur – dubbed Indominus Rex or “fierce/untamed king” – using previously undiscovered abilities has escaped from her enclosure and she’s got a mean on. She doesn’t kill for food; she kills for sport. That’s bad news for the other dinosaurs, but worse news for the tourists who aren’t aware that they’re going to become snacks for the new predator. And to make matters worse, Claire’s two nephews – brilliant Gray (Simpkins) and hormonal Zach (Robinson) – have ditched the sitter she sent to keep an eye on them and are about to have an up close and personal encounter with Indominus. She gets Owen to go out and fetch her wayward nephews but once he does, where does he take them when there is literally no safe place on the entire island?

Jurassic World broke box office records opening weekend, proving that there is still life in a franchise that Universal had abandoned some fourteen years previously. Director Colin Trevorrow (Safety Not Guaranteed) who also co-wrote this beast made a conscious effort to disconnect his movie from the other films in the franchise in subtle ways – only Wong, who appeared in the very first film, returns from the previous installments in the series. Fans may miss Ian Malcolm, Ellie Sattler and Allen Grant. However, there are plenty of connections still there, some subtle, some not so much.

First thing that fans are going to want to know is that there are dinosaurs and plenty of them. With CGI technology so much more advanced than they were in 1993 when the first film opened, the dinosaurs are much more detailed and realistically rendered here. There are almost no practical effects regarding the thunder lizards here, which is good and bad. You don’t get a sense of their physical presence as much, although Trevorrow utilized motion capture in order to make them move more realistically.

The park itself is modeled after modern theme parks, complete with Margaritaville restaurants, merchandising and a shopping/dining/entertainment zone in addition to the various attractions. Visitors kayak in a stream with Stegosauruses, roam a paddock in a gyrosphere with Apatosauruses, ride a monorail past the Tyrannosaurus Rex and watch a Mosasaurus leap out of a lagoon to pull a shark into the water before the stands are lowered to watch the leviathan devour its lunch through gigantic glass walls. There is an undercurrent of consumerism throughout that is meant to be a criticism of modern society, which while certainly inarguable is kind of like shooting fish in a barrel. I’m pretty sure most of us have noticed all the corporate sponsorship around us all these days.

Pratt, who shot to superstardom with Guardians in the Galaxylast summer looks to own this summer as well. I can’t recall an actor who has had two back-to-back movies do this kind of box office, and there are some pretty compelling reasons why audiences are connecting with Pratt. For one thing, he is an extremely likable sort with a quirky sense of humor that people first became familiar with in Parks and Recreation. He is also a genuinely nice guy who has connected with fans on a personal level, and that comes through onscreen.

Howard has one of her higher profile roles yet and Ron’s daughter acquits herself nicely. She is playing a kind of ice queen sort early on who has no idea how to interact with her nephews, so she fobs them off on an overworked and harried assistant (McGrath). Eventually she develops an ability to show the feelings she’s submerged over the years and as the movie progresses she becomes more identifiable – most of us know what it’s like to invest too much of ourselves into our jobs.

The supporting cast is pretty impressive, with D’Onofrio playing an InGen executive looking to militarize dinosaurs (which seems to be a potential theme for the inevitable sequel) and Johnson providing some comic relief as a nerdy technician with a crush on another nerdy technician (Lapkus). He also has one of the film’s nicer moments when it is revealed he’s wearing a Jurassic Park t-shirt that he got on E-Bay. The movie also visits the original Park at one point in the movie which is both touching and a bit creepy as well. Greer has a brief but memorable turn as the mother of the nephews and Claire’s sister.

The movie never recaptures the wonder that the first Jurassic Park elicited from audiences, but quite frankly that genii has already left the bottle, so expecting to be wowed in the same way just isn’t realistic. This is an entirely different movie made in an entirely different era so those grousing that the movie isn’t as good or the same as the first one are banging their heads against the wrong wall.

That isn’t to say that the movie is perfect. Like the first movie in which genius kids rescue the entire park, the kids – who put adults in danger by failing to listen to adult instructions – become insufferable because they are apparently more competent than people who have trained all their lives to do what they do. Like Alex the hacker who puts the whole park back online after the computer reboot in the original, the boys manage to elude dinosaurs that have wiped out entire squadrons of security guards better armed than they.

Short of that subplot ringing untrue, the movie has all the enjoyable elements needed for a good summer movie. While it doesn’t measure up to the first (and never intended to), it certainly stands on its own as a fun ride constructed well, although without innovation. While I can agree with those who grouse that the plot is too similar to the first Jurassic Park and follows in the formula that all four of the movies have been constructed with, I have to admit that when something works there’s no point in abandoning it. While I would love to see a JP 5 that eliminates the kids from the equation, it is unlikely that will ever happen. Kids after all make up a goodly chunk of the core audience for this film, so it would be economic suicide to ignore that chunk. This is nonetheless good, solid summer fun and anyone who says otherwise has a dino-sized stick up their rump.

REASONS TO GO: More dinosaurs is always a good thing. The park looks like a place I’d want to visit. Pratt has become a pre-eminent action hero.REASONS TO STAY: Lacks the wonder that the first film created. Suffers from genius kid syndrome.FAMILY VALUES: A goodly amount of dino-violence, peril and people being eaten.TRIVIAL PURSUIT: Bryce Dallas Howard’s outfit is all white in tribute to the costume worn by the late Sir Richard Attenborough as John Hammond in Jurassic Park. Both of the characters were directors of the park in their respective films.CRITICAL MASS: As of 6/20/15: Rotten Tomatoes: 71% positive reviews. Metacritic: 59/100.COMPARISON SHOPPING:The Lost World: Jurassic ParkFINAL RATING: 7/10NEXT:Carnage